Turning Cartwheels
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: Tia: lively, kind, happy LEP Captain. Tiamat: quiet, sad, scared Captain for the mysterious Section Eight. The difference? Ten terrifying minutes in the company of Chix Verbil.


**A/N: **Well, this one is long.

**WARNING- Contains violence, psychological damage, delusional sprites, angst and tears. Keep the tissue box beside you, all ye who enter here.**

**Dedication: **To Lady of Outlaws, my profound thanks for betaing a freaky fic that I still don't understand properly.

**Disclaimer**: Only Tia and in some part Aleser belong to me.

**Somersault**

"I told you- leave me alone!"

"But I love you! I won't be without you, I won't!"

"You're a stupid, childish, dramatic and a stalker. And you were never _with_ me." The elf shields the keypad with her hand and types her code in- the red door swings open, a bright contrast against the pale walls. "I suppose you thought I didn't know who kept sending me sweets. And who spiked my drink- that was the most _almighty_ headache, by the way; and waking up in front of my own door? I suppose you thought love, and apologies to the concept for butchering it, gave you the right to take all those photos of me, to follow me everywhere, to leave those freakish notes in my locker!"

The sprite at whom this diatribe is directed stands still, eyes fixed on the back of the elf's head.

"Taking films of me, putting them on your site; ilovetia.gnom. Chix, it's official: you. Make. Me. Sick!" At this she turns, dark eyes blazing, and with each of the last three full stops takes one tense step towards the offender. She almost screams the last few words into his passive green face- they're of a similar height.

"Don't you see? I love you, Tia."

"I never gave you permission to use my nickname!"

"Love doesn't conform to your restrictions. Your permissions, what you think is right and what isn't." Tiamat –Tia- falters in her resolve to stop Chix. It's her turn to step back. A faint glimmer of fear shows in her face.

"I love you. And I want you to love me too. I know you do, I can see it in your eyes."

"You see nothing in my eyes. You're delusional- mad!" Chix has backed her into a corner.

"You do love me. Tia, don't you understand?"

She spits in his face, but he wipes it away without taking his steady eyes off her petrified ones.

"Are you scared, Tia? – there's no need to be scared of me. I love you."

"There is every need!" Her voice shakes; Tia the terrified elf-girl can't comprehend why the trained Captain Tiamat Neon, afraid of nothing, has taken a back seat to Tia- frightened and helpless against this cold certainty. "You're crazy!"

"I am not crazy. Unless love makes you crazy." He grabs her face in his hands and kisses her; with a gasp of pure outrage and terror, she slaps him hard across the face. He does not move away. He does not give any sign that she hurt him. He simply moves closer.

Tia presses her back against the wall- he crushes her to him. She kicks, scratches, and finally- when he breaks away, stance promising more of the horrifying, debilitating same- she launches an attack of bruising punches, forcing him to step back, and back, and back, and back, until finally she draws on martial arts training. Kicking him squarely in the chest, he falls, tumbles, somersaults down the stone stairs to Tia's apartment.

Tia does not see him land. With a broken sob, tears of simple fright pouring down her face, she has shut her door already, flinging herself onto the floor and giving way to blind terror and fury.

**Cartwheel**

Tia does not go to work the next day, or the next, or the next. She files a report with the police two hours after Chix fell, but she is not seen at work and she answers no phone calls. She cartwheels into an abyss of fear and depression.

A week later, a young woman turns up at Police Plaza and asks to speak to Major Aleser Vein. She is outwardly calm, slightly shorter than Tiamat and as solid, her hair cut just below her shoulderblades, dark and loose, her eyes knowing.

"You don't know me. This is not important," she tells the puzzled Aleser, the receptionist drinking in every word, not even pretending not to eavesdrop. "My name is Juanita Neon, I am Tiamat Neon's sister. I know you're her best friend here. I would like to know if you have seen her. She has not answered calls or emails. Her neighbours say they have not seen her for a week. Have you seen my sister at all, and do you have any idea where she might be?"

"No- none of us has seen her," Aleser answers. "Not for a week."

Juanita nods. "If you do see Tia-chica, tell her I asked her to call me."

"Call you?" he asks.

Juanita nods again. "Tia-chica does not disappear for no reason. There is something wrong here."

Then she walks away, and disappears into the crowd. With a minute's worth of conversation, she has planted a seed of doubt and worry in Aleser's mind.

One of the things Aleser knows about Tiamat is her keypad number. This is because he's been to her flat many times, and her insurance requires that three other people know her keypad code, in case of an accident. He types it in (six- nine- seven- four- zero), and waits as the red door swings open.

The flat is in total darkness. He switches on a light, and looks around.

Everything is spotless. The fridge is almost empty. Clean and almost empty. There are no books on the side tables. The wriggling, creeping vine that was the seed of doubt and worry Juanita planted writhes.

He investigates the bathroom. A slight smell of detergent and soap greets him. The detergent, Aleser guesses, means that someone was sick. The shower door was open, and there were ice-cold beads of water on it.

He shuts the bathroom door gently, and opens the door to Tia's bedroom slightly. "Tiamat?"

He hears a sob, quickly stifled, and sees a tangle of dark hair. He opens it further. "Tiamat- Tia-"

"_Don't call me Tia_." The voice is husky and choky with tears, perhaps screams.

"Why?" He sits on the side of her bed, and pushes her matted, damp hair away from her face. Her eyes are red, and her face drawn and slightly pinkish from excessive scrubbing. She smelt clean. "Tiamat, we've missed you. Why have you stopped talking to any of us?" He remembers the other notable absentee, who turned up at work the day before yesterday with a bandaged head, and his hand tightens on hers. "Was it something to do with Chix?"

She doesn't answer, and he doesn't press the question, because she is crying- he isn't even sure if she heard him. She is absolutely silent. She has said only four words.

**Handspring**

The next day, when Aleser goes to work, Tiamat is not with him. Her resignation, in her simple, rounded writing, is.

_Commander, _

_I am sorry to say that I believe I have reached the end of my capacity to perform as a Captain of the LEP._

Aleser leaves it with Sool's secretary, and goes to find Captain Linden, Major Kelp, and some others who have to know before the official announcement, if there is one. He gives no explanation.

_I return my insignia and my papers. I shall not be coming in again._

However, later in the day Linden corners him and demands anything he knows about Tiamat, such an unusual move from the unassuming woman that he tells her the state Tiamat was in, and his personal conjecture on the matter- it's Chix who dunnit, whatever he dun. Together, they clear out Tiamat's cubicle.

_Regards, _

_T. Neon _

They check her account for any personal information and delete it. The computer Linden takes to Foaly, leaving it with not a word outside Ops. Neither answer any questions. Aleser stacks her photographs, one of Tiamat and her sisters –clearly, she came from a large family- Tiamat's graduation, Tiamat's parents, her mother smiling brightly and bravely at the camera, a come-hell-or-high-water smile , her father's smile whimsical and lazy (Aleser recognizes a shadow of Tiamat's impudent grin in her father's smile). Tia's tool- and first-aid kits are in her drawers. So is a small pencil torch. Aleser incinerates an unopened letter from Chix, then takes the incinerator to Foaly, putting it behind the computer. Aleser wishes he could manage Linden's (what was her first name? He's suprised to realise he doesn't know) trick of an instant, impassive, polite face, the face that looked as if you could make a volcano erupt in front of it and it would raise an eyebrow and return to work without comment. He is sure his own face is a patchwork of fury, sadness and worry. Every time he thinks of Tia, curled up, sobbing her heart out, he wants to strangle something. Preferably Chix Verbil.

**Handstand**

Aleser wonders where Tiamat goes to work. He knows she goes somewhere, and sometimes he sees her in a black uniform, but he doesn't know what she does. She was wearing a baton and Neutrino in her belt, and there was a pair of platinum (platinum? Who wears _platinum_?) acorns on her lapel, so she was LEP- just a branch he didn't know at all. Given that her head was encompassed in a dark helmet of advanced design, he wasn't even sure it was her he saw leaving a crime scene with another elf who moved like Holly Short. At least, he couldn't offer any factual evidence- but he knew. (And Trouble swore it was Holly walking with her, although what that meant Aleser didn't even want to think about.)

He did see her once more. Her face was an uncaring visage that might as well have been carved from stone, and her eyes seemed dead, closed off, with only a glimmer of sadness to indicate that there might still be a fairy in there. As far as he knew, she hadn't seen him, for she stared straight through him, but he was wrong. She had seen him, and the sadness, and the knowledge that she hurt a colleague, whether a stalker or not, and the naked fear of that stalker that formed a knife in her heart twisted and she broke her neat military step.

Aside from the mystery, the where-did-she-go and why-does-her-face-look-like-that, Aleser saw Juanita twice again, both times in passing by mistake. Each time, he received a cold glare, sharp and icy. He doesn't know what he's done wrong, but Linden (turns out her first name is Cordelia, a name he'd've kept secret too- had he been a girl) went over to talk to her and ever since he's got a variant of that same glance from her, but more cutting. She won't tell him what was wrong either, what he's done. He asked, but her lips remained tightly pressed together, until they framed the answer: _It's more what you haven't done_. And she said nothing for the rest of the patrol, and has kept words to a minimum since.

This is starting to look distressingly like a girls' conspiracy.

To top it off, every so often Aleser hears people talking, gossiping about her.

_I heard she went to Section Eight._

_What Section Eight? Never heard of them. Why would they recruit her?_

_Dunno._

_I heard she was attacked by someone, and scarred, and she doesn't want us to see her face..._

_Hardly a beauty, anyway._

Aleser wants to stop and tell them, actually, she wasn't scarred, far from it, very pretty.

_I heard she was raped. Wouldn't be surprised if it was true, too, she was a bit of a slag._

She wasn't! Aleser thinks, indignant. You don't know her. She could stand all your theories on their heads- liars! But he said nothing, and that was part of the problem.

**Backflip**

A few months later, Aleser finds her again.

It starts when a small squad –say ten or so individuals- dressed in the black uniform, with the platinum acorns comes into Police Plaza. Vinyáya was with them, her hair silver down her back, the acorns on her lapel gold- a commander's acorns, although it is pretty clear she commanded the men and women in black, and would have been so without the acorns.

While Vinyáya vanishes into the Council room, her guards spread out, removing helmets. Most of them are ex-LEP, remembering old comrades –Holly was certainly very quick to spot Trouble- and so the atmosphere turns into carnival.

Aleser is caught up in a tunnel of talk, laughter and friendship, in which Tiamat is invisible- and probably forgotten. The forgotten girl. The lost guardian angel. The ghost of Tia, the shadow of Tia-chica.

He shivers, and, making polite excuses, escaped the turmoil of people, and- out of the corner of his eye- sees the retreating heel of one black boot flash around the corner that led to the gym. He grins, remembering the time the innocent, cheeky elf who dabbled in mechanics and asked him to call her Tia turned six consecutive cartwheels in the lobby for a bet. She liked her acrobatics.

Giving her time to make it to the gym, he dawdles, talking to people who weren't interested in talking to the visitors, reading notices, and generally procrastinating.

He takes the stairs, certain Tiamat would have gone this way too.

The LEP gym had recently been renovated, and it shows in the clean sufaces, unsullied white paint, and new carpets. However, Aleser bypasses the untouched machines and weights, heading for an empty room, mostly used for stretches, crunchball practice or nothing.

He is right. Through the small safety glass pane in the white door, he could see flashes of black as Tiamat flips, cartwheels and somersaults furiously.

Aleser knocks softly. Tiamat glances towards the door, nods briefly, and does a series of backflips that end up at the other end of the room.

He pushes open the door, and steps inside.

It is quite a large room, with a well-trodden wooden floor, crash-mats up against the walls, and the crunchball nets and lines. Tiamat has ignored all of this, simply removing her boots and helmet.

Aleser watches as she completes a perfect handspring. "How have you been?" he asks.

"So-so."

He thinks, unsure about how to frame this next difficult question. He waits until she was in the middle of a handstand, and thus _hors de combat_, and then says: "You never told me what happened."

She ends the handstand. "You never asked."

A voice, polite, yet curt and closed, intones somewhere in the back of Aleser's mind- _It's more what you haven't done._

He sits down hard. "Never?"

She nods. "Never."

He reaches for her hand. "Will you tell me now?"

_Somersault._

She doesn't answer, or take the hand, just rolls into a succession of somersaults that must hurt her head. But when she finally comes up for air, she sits staring at the wall ahead, knees drawn up to her chest, toes pointed, spread hands supporting her. "It was Chix." Her eyes glimmer with tears she doesn't want to cry. Not again, she tells herself sternly. Not again. I am not going to cry, not again.

_Cartwheel._

"You know how he used to follow me, started following me. The time he spiked my drink. All the sweets he sent me? Well, he followed me to my flat. He scared me." Almost absently, she stands, and falls into a cartwheel. She muffs it halfway through, and lands sprawling on the floor just in front of Aleser. She stands briskly and keeps talking through her acrobatics.

_Handspring._

"He said he loved me and he wouldn't be without me," she continues, and starts a handspring. Looking at Aleser- who had tensed unconsciously, his hands becoming fists- she says, face blank, "He backed me into a corner and told me I loved him."

_Handstand._

Tiamat does a handstand, holding still as long as possible. "He kissed me." A tear winks on her cheek, and with it her handstand gracefully collapses. She stands, again, and throws- "I kicked him down the stairs"- over her shoulder like a rock.

Aleser bites his lip. He wants the full story. Interrupting now will not help.

_Backflip. _

She flips and comes to a perfect end, arms dropping from their resolute, automatic high position to slump by her side. "And he scared me," she whispers. "He scared me _so much_."

Tiamat stays standing, as if she needs to be constantly on her feet, waiting for an attack that might exist. "I was sick. I felt dirty. I knew I couldn't go back. It was just luck that Vinyáya offered me a job at Section Eight- through Holly."

Aleser stands, and puts a hand carefully on her shoulder. She doesn't stop him. "i wish you'd told me earlier."

Suddenly, Tiamat turns into his grip, burying her head in his shoulder. "I do, too. But I couldn't shake that it was somehow _my fault_. That I did something to bring it on, and then I almost killed him. I felt unclean." Aleser can hardly hear the muffled words. "I have never been so frightened in my whole life."

Aleser says nothing. He just gave her a best friend's hug, and let her feel safe, and hopes that one day she would forget at least a little about Chix Verbil. It is another finished routine. Another acrobatic manoeuvre that she muffed. But Aleser is there to help her up now, and he always will be. Like the best friend he is.


End file.
